


never come to any good

by theseourbodies



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bullying, Dysfunctional Family, Fighting, Gen, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Necessary OCs, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: He hadn't really thought that there was anything else that his dad and the universe could take away from him. Turns out, there are a lot of things that Steve had been taking for granted that could, in fact, just not exist for him anymore.A prep school/boarding school au and unofficial sequel topack up the moon, dismantle the sun, a story about Doris McGarrett's funeral, and what comes after.
Relationships: Mary Ann McGarrett & Steve McGarrett, Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	never come to any good

**Author's Note:**

> Approximately 3 million years ago, I started writing one of my first fics in this fandom. I wrote the first section, and and I had most of the second before I shut down my computer without saving. The second part was lost forever, so this fic was written in the spirit of the AU that _pack up the moon, dismantle the sun_ was meant to be-- a golden child/troubled kid au in which Danny is the golden boy and Steve is... not. However, that trope rapidly transformed into my much beloved popular kid/nerd au featuring a military-school-esque boarding school setting and nerd!Steve. 
> 
> This story deals with themes of bullying, family neglect, and, to some extent, gender stereotypes.
> 
> **I love a good procedural, and H5O was a favorite show of mine for a very long time. But support for this fictional show is not endorsement of the institution is romanticizes. If you enjoyed this fic, or any of my other H50 works, please consider supporting bail funds and other support networks for victims of police brutality and racism. Remember their names.**

The Showalter Preparatory Academy doesn't even have a football club. It shouldn't be all that bad, but it feels like a kick in a tender place that Steve didn't even know was there. There are no organized sports teams at the school; a sports club had been his last hope for anything like the high school life he had expected when he started his sophomore year. But that had been  over 5,000  miles away from this cold, miserable, landlocked little prison. Maine is a coastal state about the size of the big island. New York is bigger; being in-land here shouldn't feel any different than living in upstate New York, but it does. It just does. There's no surfing, no beaches; no swimming in anything other than a dingy, non-Olympic length lap pool in the basement of the gym, and now there was no football. He hadn't really thought that there was anything else that his dad and the universe could take away from him. Turns out, there are a lot of things that Steve had been taking for granted that could, in fact, just not exist for him anymore.

Letting the glossy brochure slip from his hands, Steve scrubs his hand back through his recently buzzed-short hair, suddenly hot-eyed and choking on tears. Everything, everything rushes through him all at once. He feels his face get hot and his hands start to shake; his mouth twists and his lip wobbles and for a humiliating, perfect moment, Steve lets the tears come. His room isn't private-- he has three other roommates in the big white square, each of them with a bed and a dresser in each corner. If he has to do this, and it certainly feels like it's required right now, he has to do it now before his roommates come back to find him sobbing his heart out over football and the ocean and his poor dead mother when he should be unpacking. He sinks down onto the foot of the  narrow, hard single bed he's been assigned, buries his face in his hands, and lets himself have this. 

He manages to get himself under control, but it's barely in the very nick of time; the other guys straggle back into the room for mid-morning break to find the much lauded special-recommendation student with red-rimmed eyes and a thick voice, and the rest is kind of history. Everyone on their floor knows by lunch; everyone in their dormitory knows by dinner: the hot shit late arrival the headmaster had wrapped himself into knots to accommodate was a cry baby freak who couldn't take being away from mommy and daddy for more than a day. It blows over, eventually, and by the time Steve stops finding diapers in the drawer with his boxers and binkies in his back pack, he's already decided that he needs to focus on school, anyway. The extra emphasis on physical education is something he can mostly do without thinking; even when he's not trying, he's keeping up. But it turns out, he's way behind in Chemistry; he really needs to focus on Biology and Anatomy; and then in English, they're covering a completely different list of novels. By the time Steve thinks to look up and check on his status as a babyish freak show, he's already been branded a know-it-all, a science geek, a nerd; everything his friends back at  Kukui High used to call him jokingly and with warmth. 

Being called a nerd to his face with contempt is new, but eventually it becomes just another thing that Steve can hate about being trapped in this cold, awkward stone building. His first mainland winter hits the academy building and the grounds with extreme prejudice, and normally Steve might have tried to tough it out with the bare minimum of winter gear, like most of the other students. But he's not regular Steve, here. He's nerdy Steve who can barely keep up in his PE classes or during drills, he's geeky Steve who prefers staying in and doing his homework early instead of sneaking out and catching the bus into town. He's below the notice of most of the popular kids, and he's now below even the contempt of most of the better-known bullies in his classes, too. It's kind of like being invisible; if Steve didn't hate the feeling with every bone in his body, he might even be a little grateful to be left alone. 

And then, almost without Steve realizing what was happening, an entire year goes by. 

\---

A week before his next Christmas break, Steve almost gets himself expelled. 

What happens is, Steve calls home for the first time since he landed on the mainland from the payphone in  the e ntry hall  of Steve's dorm. Steve's been saving up; he'd drop every cent he's been saving from the monthly allowance his dad's been sending to the school just to hear his dad say his name. He doesn't really know why he does it; it's Mary Ann's birthday tomorrow and he'd been saving up to call her and talk as long as she wanted to. But he places the call to Hawaii instead, to a number he'd memorized when he was four years old. It rings and rings. It rings some more, and then the call connects. 

Steve's on the phone for two minutes, maybe less. There are a group of boys, including one of his roommates, in the lobby off the entry hall. They're playing some strange form of chess that he thinks might actually be a cover for a poker game, and almost all of them jump when Steve slams the receiver back down into its cradle; he thunders through the lobby and pounds up the stairs. He thinks one of them might call after him, worried, but Steve's deaf and blind and dumb with fury. 

What happens is, Steve calls home for the first time in a year, and his father tells him not to call again. 

Steve skips the homework he was going to commit to this evening. He dives under his bed on his belly and pulls out the bright pink wrapped package his sister had sent him last week, which he had tucked away in the bed frame so no one would mess with it until he could open it for Christmas. It's a week and a half until the holiday, but Steve tears into the present anyway, desperate for something, anything, from someone who remembers like he remembers that they had once had a life together. Someone who still loved him and wanted to stay connected. The paper is bright and thick, but it shreds under his hands easily, until Steve is staring down at a little string lanyard, long enough around to be tied higher up on his wrist than usual so he could tuck it away during uniform inspection. His friends Cho and Marina had made the last one that Steve had worn; it had been made of thicker, un-dyed cord, and he'd kept it as a bookmark when the administration had made him cut it off his ankle when he'd been admitted to the academy. This one that Mary made for him is a thin riot of color, electric green and blue and pink and yellow. He can see a few kinked places where Mary hesitated, trying to remember how to do the wrap, but it's strong and tight under his fingers. She'd done a great job. 

He hasn't cried since he got here, and he doesn't cry now. One handed and stubborn, he ties the bracelet onto his left wrist, tight enough that it won't slip down his hand, loose enough that he can push it up his forearm and out of sight. The thread Mary used is soft against his skin, so light he can barely feel it. Steve sits and stares down at the color against the salmon-belly white skin of his arms. He's so pale now. He feels so worn thin. 

Martin Parker, the roommate from downstairs, sticks his head into the dark room some time later-- Steve hadn't turned the lights on when he'd come up, and the sun's gone down as he unwrapped Mary's gift and put it on. Even the way the sun goes down earlier and earlier in winter is a misery, here. The dark always feels eager and mean. 

"Hey, you good  Mc-G ?"

Parker's not exactly  _ not  _ a friend, so Steve says quietly, "Yeah, 'm good" instead of pretending to be asleep. He runs his fingertips over the thin rope of tightly wound thread, and he's surprised to find that he is good. Or, he's definitely better. 

The good mood lasts right up until just after first block the next day. Steve's been stubbornly forcing himself to forget the terrible call with his dad the evening before through the blunt force application of Greek tragedy and occasional glances at Mary's bracelet around his wrist. For the most part, it's been working, but he can still feel his temper straining; it won't take much to set him off like this, and so Steve's been avoiding anything and everything that might test him. So far, that's meant keeping his head down in Mr. Canner's trigonometry class when the man kept picking on  Jonesburgh again and avoiding most of the main hallways when he changed classes. He's in the main hallway for the first time that day only because it's the only way to get to Mrs. Trujillo's lab; he sticks his nose in his battered text book and keeps one eye on the path. He hasn't forgotten how to navigate a crush of people, even if they're not all coming for him in full pads. He absolutely doesn't make eye contact with anyone. 

Steve has to pull a spin move straight out of Coach  Waikele's playbook to get around a tight, small cluster of boys that stop suddenly in front of him. Steve doesn't stumble but he does cuss softly under his breath-- and of course, at that moment, that's when someone suddenly realizes that hey, there are other people trying to walk through this hallway that they're blocking. And of course, because Steve's specifically trying to avoid things that might set his temper off, it's Danny Williams that's the one looking.

It's not that Williams is a bad guy, because he probably isn't. Or, he probably doesn't go out of his way to kill puppies or trip grannies or anything. He's just not exactly a good guy, either. Or, he's not exactly a good guy to Steve, and while that's probably not fair to Williams in general, it matters a lot to Steve. Stubborn, powerful, and entitled-- that's Williams down to a perfectly crossed 'T'. Steve doesn't know his story and he doesn't want to, but if this tiny slice of hell has taught him anything, it's that you don't get as popular or as influential as Williams is without some real-life connections. Even Mr. Archer, the draconic English teacher Steve and Williams share, is mellow for Danny Williams. Nothing about him is ever out of place; not his tie nor his blazer nor the shiny bar under the embroidered patch on that blazer that marks Williams as a prefect. 

Normally, none of this would bother Steve about a person; he's here in this place because of his own connections through his father, and he knows that those aren't things that you can help. Hell, good on Williams if he's decided to take advantage. And Steve's mom-- Steve's family had always appreciated looking sharp. It's just that, Williams isn't just popular and influential in this little kingdom; he's also one of the few, stubborn bullies that got their teeth into Steve early and never quite let go. There's always  something-- Steve's blazer is  mis -buttoned, he's ripped a seam (again,) his hair is getting too long in back. It's never anything inappropriate or even really mean; Williams' is well within his rights to call Steve on a sloppy uniform or slacking school work. It's just that Williams does it all the time, and only to Steve, and it's so hard to ignore or to brush off at the end of the day. Steve doesn't even know why, really. It just is. 

" McGarrett \--" Williams starts and Steve can't help scowling before he can even get all of Steve's name out of his mouth. Williams, predictably, scowls back. "Hey--!"

"The hell is your problem  McGarrett ?" 

Steve actually, physically flinches, shocked stupid to hear a different voice than he first expected. He sees Williams jump a little, too. It's Peterson who spoke, tall and lean and full of himself. Steve had forgotten that he and Williams weren't alone, and it leaves him a little shaken. Too shaken, it turns out, to keep his careful hold of his temper. 

"Just leave me alone, Peterson. Get out of the middle of the hallway if you want me to be polite." 

Peterson's eyes narrow, and Steve's whole world narrows, too. He can't find nerd Steve right now, quiet bookworm Steve who only cares about keeping up with his schoolwork and keeping his head down. He's just real Steve, who once ran a touchdown while dragging a 200 lbs. lineman with him for the last yard. He's shot up three inches in the year he's been here; he can do their required training regimen in his sleep, and the pace of the daily exercise is building lean, powerful muscle up Steve's back and core, in his arms and thighs. He's even better than he was when he was starting regularly with the Kings, and unfortunately for a bully like Peterson, Steve knows his own strength. 

Try it, he thinks as Peterson squares up in front of him. Just make my goddamn day. 

He'd forgotten that not every bully is like Williams, though; Williams is all about petty shit, all about the uniform and how Steve can't seem to find a blazer or a pair of slacks that can fit him for more than a week or two at a time. Peterson's a different breed altogether, and now Steve has his full attention. He watches Peterson scan him, looking for a chink in Steve's armor; Steve sees the moment he finds it, his watery blue eyes snagging somewhere around Steve's left wrist, exposed by the too-short sleeve of his jacket. 

"Je- _ sus _ ,  McGarrett , you really can't get a hold of being normal, can you? Your mommy sending you jewelry now?" 

And maybe, maybe, Steve could have handled that. He could have swallowed all his grief and all his rage and walked away from shitty, small minded Rick Peterson. But Peterson's a well-known member of the boxing club, he knows all about follow-through-- he reaches out and loops two skinny fingers through the bracelet around Steve's wrist and yanks like he's trying to pull it off of Steve. 

Steve doesn't hesitate. Peterson yanks his left wrist forward, and Steve yanks it back and uses the momentum to punch Peterson right in the throat. Quick and dirty rabbit punch, power from the core like his mom had taught him years and lifetimes ago, when Steve had still thought that the worst things that could happen to him would actually happen  _ to him _ . 

Peterson chokes and stumbles back, and he pulls Steve with him with his fingers still tangled in the lanyard. They go down in a pile with another of Williams' friends and for a hot and terrible moment Steve is smothered and trapped. Then someone gets an elbow into his face and a knee into his guts, and it steals all of his breath that his lungs are trying to choke on; just like that, he's giving back everything he's taking. He kicks out instinctively, yanks his wrist away from Peterson, and punches down at the other boy's face once, twice-- someone grabs his upraised fist and yanks him back and away, gets him onto his back-- Steve kicks out again, vicious, and gets a knee up just as another body tries to fall on top of him to nail the kid in the crotch. The boy yelps and folds over Steve's bent knee-- Steve shoves him off and scrambles back up to his feet, head pounding, blood screaming, fists up. Someone yanks him back and away from the tangle of bodies still trying to sort itself out on the floor and Steve lets the pull on his shoulder whip him around-- his fist is already punching forward when something hard as a mallet slams into his solar plexus and bends him double. He smacks his forehead into a hard, broad shoulder and doesn't have the breath to fight the hand that clamps onto his nape and lowers him to his knees. He wheezes desperately; the shoulder he's held to disappears along with the pressure on the back of his neck, but when he tries to get back up, he just ends up with his forehead to the floor, his arms around his belly. 

"Stay down, you stupid bastard. Stay down!" Someone yells over his head or maybe at him, and Steve slumps suddenly. Now that he's been dropped, that he's not actively fighting, every inch of his body starts to throb in sympathy with the ache in his gut and the throbbing in his chin and shoulder-- someone must have hit him there when they were all piled up, but he doesn't remember who. Trying to see through his blurring vision, Steve looks over at the mess of people he left behind. If he had had the breath to gasp, he would have. 

Williams, red-faced, hair fallen out of its usual slick, has Peterson in some kind of complicated looking wrestling hold with his arm against a thrashing Peterson's throat as he bellows into his friend's face. Steve's hearing is coming back in waves as his heart rate begins to slow, and he can finally tune in to Williams shouting "Rick you stupid motherfucker, stop! Stop, I said stop, now!" Peterson finally goes limp and Steve can't tell if it's because he stopped struggling or because Williams caused him to pass out. All around, boys are holding back other boys in familiar holds. Parker and another of Steve's  dormmates , Jones, have materialized out of the bystanders. They hover around Steve, and he can't tell if they're there to protect him or keep him from getting into it with Peterson again. 

When he has his breath again, he holds out a hand to Parker. "Can you help me up?" When Parkr does, Steve figures it's probably six of one, half-dozen of the other when Parker and Jones subtly close ranks behind Steve. Across the little gulf that formed between Steve and Peterson once Williams got involved, Steve watches Williams stagger to his feet. Regulations allow for a certain length of hair, and Williams always keeps the top of his fade as long as he can without quite toeing the line. It's usually swept into a stupid heart-throb swoop back from his face, like a white surfer from a vintage poster. Now its crashing onto  his forehead, a casualty of breaking up the fight (that he essentially started, Steve thinks meanly) along with one of the buttons on his blazer. When Williams whips around the look at Steve, his bangs swing and bounce; Steve finds it hard not to stare. 

Williams, as usual, helpfully provides an incentive to glare instead of stare. " McGarrett ," he says, and it rumbles up Steve’s spine and into his brain. All that fury he'd been throwing at Peterson still burns in his voice; but he stumbles on whatever he was going to say. Steve, who had been leaning into his oncoming scream falters back, too. Instead of yelling, or screaming, or hitting Steve again, Williams just slumps a little and says, "You've blown out the back of that blazer again. Take it off before you go see the Dean." 

Steve stares at him stupidly. There's a flutter at the edge of his vision; his head is pounding again. Williams doesn't seem to notice or care. He draws himself up to his pathetic five feet and change, and buttons his own blazer again. One careful hand sweeps his hair back off his forehead; he cracks his neck and settles his shoulders and all of sudden, it's like nothing ever happened. Two of their teachers step in to hustle everyone involved off to the Dean's office, both of them pretending like they hadn't been waiting for Williams' permission to step in. Williams leads the way with one hand wrapped tightly in the back of Peterson's blazer to drag him along. The boys Peterson and Steve had dragged down with them follow behind and Steve brings up the rear. He can feel air against his back, making the sweat soaked into the fabric of his button down go clammy; Williams' was right about busting the seam. He's missing a button, too, and one sleeve feels suspiciously loose around his shoulder. When he checks, he sees that he's ripped the seam there, too. 

Steve just yanks the remaining button away from where it's barely hanging on and stuffs it into his pocket. He takes the tie off, too, and just lets it drop to the floor. He hates the tie anyway. Nerd Steve wears it religiously, every day, but Steve's starting to think that after this stunt, no one's going to be calling him a nerd in quite the same way.

He refuses to take the blazer off, though, clinging stubbornly to the warmth glowing in his chest at this little rebellion. Fuck Williams anyway, and fuck what the Dean thinks. Fuck Peterson and this whole toxic waste dump of a school. Steve threw the first punch, and if Peterson and Williams decide to spin a tale about that well, fine. Steve had never wanted to come here in the first place.

The two teachers hustle them all the way to the Dean’s office, scattering other students and shooing away the more dogged hangers-on. Steve almost expects them to peel off themselves and leave Danny to handle talking to Dean  Marchand , but when they reach the office door they’re still there. The Dean’s secretary, Ms.  Angelovich (no known first name,) is a tiny old woman with small, bright eyes, like a bird. Whatever she may think of their little parade, she only watches them march in without a flinch; she waves the two instructors inside without bothering to let the Dean know they were coming in and tells the boys the instructors leave behind to make themselves comfortable in a high, scratchy voice. Steve doesn’t bother taking a seat in one of the narrow, stiff backed chairs available; the other guys decline silently as well. Ms.  Angelovich gives them all a short, approving nod, and then goes back to aggressively typing without looking at her screen, eyes flicking only occasionally away from the group in front of her to the document she was copying from.

The message is pretty clear that she wasn’t to be messed with. Thoroughly cowed by the walk to the office and Ms.  Angelovich’s pointed watchfulness, the group of boys in front of her stay respectfully still and quiet.

Steve gingerly touches the bruise he can already feeling just under his ribs. This is probably the worst of what he has to show for this fight besides his ruined blazer. He still feels the same as he did in the hallway, a little, but the feeling that had been buoying him is fading slowly. Now Steve’s just tired, battered in body and in heart.

Steve’s trying to shake the last of the adrenaline that’s still making his hands shake. He drags air in and pushes it out of his lungs, pulling deep through his nose and releasing silently through his mouth. When he looks around, Peterson has his eyes fixed on him. There’s already a trace of bruising where Steve had hit him—throat, eye, nose. Steve just keeps breathing, battering back his sense of satisfaction at the dried blood crusting under Peterson’s nose. He shouldn’t be proud of this. Peterson was a bully, but he hadn’t had fair warning. Steve could have really hurt him. Even four on one, he could have really broken Peterson’s nose or cheekbones, his jaw. He’s on the backslide from all that adrenaline and self righteous fury; old, familiar shame is trying to fill the space where the anger had been, and the combination is making him feel sick.

He’s just about to give in and take a seat as far away from the rest of the boys as he can when Williams himself lets out an explosive breath. The waiting room isn’t large—he takes a step and he’s practically in Steve’s face. He frowns down at Steve’s hand on Steve’s stomach like it’s personally offended him, but he doesn’t make a comment. Steve doesn’t remember much about who hit him there, but he suspects from the flashes he’s starting to get through the battle haze of the fight that it had probably been Williams who had taken him down.

Steve expects another fight when Williams finally opens his mouth, but Williams just says tightly, “I’m sorry for that.”

Steve feels his scowl drop off his face, but he can’t help it. The shock’s almost too much for him; he has to physically lock his knees.

“Listen, when the Dean asks, you tell him you fell,” Williams tells him quietly, low enough that the secretary can pretend she can’t hear them.

“What?” Steve asks stupidly. His brain tries to process what Williams is saying to him. He wants Steve to lie for him?

“When the Dean asks you what you were doing, if you were fighting, you say you fell down, ok?”

Behind Williams, Peterson looks like his head is about to explode. “Fuck you Danny,” he rasps, but he flinches when Williams turns on him with a near silent snarl.

“Rick I swear to God, you try and throw  McGarrett under the bus for this , and a bruised nose is the least of your problems,” Williams whisper-yells.

“Guy beat me half to shit, Danny! I was just  jokin ’ around!” The swelling in his nose and his bruised throat makes Peterson sound like an aggressive goose, but he’s also being quiet.

Williams points one blunt finger at him. Steve’s been on the receiving end of that point several times now, but he’s never been able to appreciate the way Williams draws his shoulders up like a bull dog, like nothing and no one could get by him unless he allows it. Steve can’t help himself—he relaxes just a little bit more with Williams standing in front of him, between Steve and this brand new attack. He had thought that it wouldn’t matter to him what story Williams and Peterson would cook up, but he thinks he might care a lot, now that Williams was cooking up a story to save all of them from the block.

“It’s all our asses if one of us says anything, got it? And besides, do you really want to be the one to tell  Marchand that you got beat up over a friendship bracelet?” 

Peterson looks mutinous, and Steve can almost read the stupid, bully BUT HE STARTED IT argument written across his face. Steve’s right hand curls around the lanyard on his wrist, and he can’t really help that, either. It would have been better not to draw attention to it; if the Dean knows that Steve’s wearing it, he might make Steve cut it off, and Peterson’s the kind of person to make himself look like a fool just to get something that Steve likes taken away from him.  Marchand had been eager enough to have Jack  McGarrett owe him a favor or four, but Steve has the feeling that that willingness to bend isn’t going to extend to Steve’s  brightly colored and apparently inflammatory choices in bracelets.

As Williams and Peterson  go nearly toe-to-toe , Steve finds himself wondering if Williams would have called him on it if he had seen the lanyard before Peterson had. Experience tells him yes, Williams probably would have, but there’s something about Williams standing in front of him with his barely regulation hair and his well-prepared lies about fighting; some instinct tells Steve that Williams maybe just might have let him get away with the bracelet around his wrist. It’s a weird thought, and Steve isn’t really sure that he likes it. He doesn’t really like what it might mean to him if his instinct proved wrong; he likes even less thinking about what it might mean to him if his instinct was  _ right. _

The Dean starts calling them in one by one before Williams can really force the issue with Peterson. Steve thinks that Williams probably won, though, after Peterson, the first name the Dean calls, comes out of his office and gives Steve an absolutely furious glare. Williams is called in next, and he enters and leaves without fanfare; if anyone had landed a hit on him during the fight, it hadn’t affected his rolling, confident stride. Williams fixes Steve with a look right before he walks himself out of the waiting room, but he doesn’t try to talk to Steve again. Steve tells himself that he’s glad for that, and not disappointed at all. No matter what Williams had done for him today, he’s still a stubborn bully. He’s still half the reason anyone still pays attention to Steve, because he just can’t let Steve  _ go. _

Steve’s the last man called in. Ms.  Angelovich had been the one to take him on a tour of the building and the out-buildings when Steve had gotten here midterm. She’d been crisp and efficient, and he had liked  her very much for not staring or asking probing questions. She gives him a tiny smile when Steve makes his way past her desk, now, and he appreciates that, too.

The meeting with the Dean is mostly a haze. Steve is crashing hard and starting to hurt, and the Dean keeps asking him the same question in different ways. Steve stands with his feet braced and his hands behind his back, and repeats Williams’ words again and again until finally Dean  Marchand gives up.

“This is not the conduct I’ve come to expect from you, Steve. I will be letting you father know about this, believe me.”

It’s funny, but even though his bruises are aching and his head is trying to spin, that’s the part of the interview that really makes him want to puke. Everything that Steve has been trying to avoid thinking about threatens to crush him, to bring him to his knees as sure as Danny Williams’ fist. Steve bites down on the sudden urge to scream and just says, “I understand, sir.”

\---

Williams is leaning against the hall across from the door to the waiting room when Steve steps out again. Steve's not happy to see him at all, but the kneejerk resistance to Williams' presence has mysteriously gone silent in his brain.

"Wanted to make sure you knew w h ere the nurse's office was," Williams says, and it's rough again, rumbling like before but Steve doesn't think he's angry at Steve. Williams'  posse is nowhere to be seen; if Peterson had tried to stick around to give Steve hell, Steve chooses to tentatively believe that Williams chased him off.

Steve has never had to visit the nurse before, being neither prone to illness nor (before today) prone to starting fights that required medical treatment. He has the very vaguest idea of where the infirmary is. When he opens his mouth, though, he just says, "I know how to get there, thanks." He doesn't hesitate-- he picks a direction down the hallway and strikes out that way.

"Sure you do," Steve hears Williams mutter behind him.  Steve gets most of the way to the stairway at the end of the hall before the other boy calls after him, breathing like he's jogging to catch up with Steve. "It'll take you twice as long going that way,  McGarrett . Just stop being such a stubborn bastard for once and let me do my job."

Steve comes to a stop in the middle of the hall and turns to glare at Williams, who slows to a stop a wary distance away. Good, Steve thinks, noticing the space between them and ignoring the stupid, confusing way his stomach twists. Williams raises his hands between them, a little peacemaking gesture.

"I just don't want you to sneak off and lick your hurts in private, ok? You're not a dog, Steve. This isn't a  freakin ' kennel."

Williams has never called him by his first name before; in an all-boys school meant to prep attendees for high level government and military service, barely anyone calls Steve by his first name. He bites his lip against the pathetic, soft warmth that tries to grow in his chest. Maybe Williams isn't a bully like Peterson is a bully, but he still can't seem to just leave Steve alone. And Steve really does just want to be left alone to mind his own hems and take his own knocks in inspection when his hair's too long or his cuffs are too short. He vaguely but sincerely just wants Williams to pick at the things that everyone else does , the things that Steve can’t really help and that don’t feel like personal failings.

Maybe then he could actually feel ok about how viscerally he really hates what this boy does to him.

Steve shivers once, hard. It's cold, he's cold, he feels like he'll never be warm again sometimes; he fights the nasty urge to argue about what exactly this brutal, freezing building could be if it wasn't a place to hold half-wild things. Steve stalls for a second, looking away from Williams and back the way Steve had been going. He’s about to tell Williams to piss off, and make a clean break from this wildly confusing situation. He’s got his mouth open and everything. Instead, he caves as the ache in his head does its best to go from dull to piercing all at once. He hates being hurt almost as much as he hates the chill he can't seem to escape here.

"Ok. Ok, fine. Where's the infirmary?"

Williams jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "You  gonna follow me nice, or am I going to have to walk backwards and keep an eye on you?" Steve thinks that his accent is almost as thick now as it had been when he was screaming in Peterson's face , what feels like a lifetime ago.

"...Just walk, you don't have to watch me," Steve mutters, suddenly embarrassed by all the drama. Williams hooks a crooked, bright grin at him before he turns away; Steve thinks that they must hit one of the infrequent pockets of miserably hot air put out by the radiators along the wall. His whole body feels overheated for a second.

They walk a little slower than either of them  usually do. Williams is impressively short for a 17-year-old guy, but he's got a quick, tight stride that gets him places in a hurry. Steve just has his long legs and a general unwillingness to be caught loitering anywhere. But the pain in his head and the ache in his diaphragm are making his vision feel a little sloshy, so he's more than willing to match Williams' pace. He still can't tell if the other boy was hit or hurt at all, but it definitely makes him feel a little better to blame that for Williams' slower speed. The alternative is that Williams is slowing down for Steve, which is frankly unacceptable. Pity from a man like this is as bad as a punch from a guy like Peterson, and Steve  doesn’t have to understand it to know it in a deep-down, cop-gut kind of way.

They don’t talk again until they’re almost all the way through the infirmary door. Mr. Trujillo (the Biology teacher’s husband, at least Steve does know that,) makes a complicated clucking noise when he sees Williams.

“Daniel what is it this time? The Spanish Flu? Perhaps fatal E. Coli?”

And Steve almost jumps out of his skin when Williams groans obnoxiously next to him. The look on his face is comical when Steve turns to stare at his previously stoic escort—all big blue eyes and crumpled brows over a deep, exaggerated frown.

“I am absolutely crushed to be greeted like this, Doc. I have company, can’t you wait to cast aspersions on my character until I’m at least out of earshot?” Williams’ accent is so thick now that Steve thinks he has to be faking some of it. He’s not sure what surprises him more—that Williams is apparently a hypochondriac or that he can correctly use words like  _ aspersions. _

“The last time you came in you had half the class in a panic about the plague, young man. I am very cautious now.” 

Williams shakes his head back and forth slowly. “’ Jillo , ‘ Jillo , my friend I am devastated. I am--”

“Crushed, yes, yes. You mentioned.” 

Steve has to  crush his lips together and look away to keep from laughing outright. Mr. Trujillo is a reserved older man with similar eyes to Ms.  Angelovich —watchful and much more youthful than his wrinkled skin and  slate grey hair would lead a person to believe. Williams, in contrast, is an ancient old man berating his long - suffering doctor. Usually, Steve doesn’t get this much East coast from Williams—when Williams has something to say to him, the most Steve usually gets is a firm finger pointed at him. Here in the infirmary, Williams comes unchained. His hands are going in big, expressive gestures; his feet start pacing, taking Williams  in long, tight circles as he starts to talk. It’s so bizarre that Steve can’t help watching. It’s like seeing Oz behind the curtain.

“Yes, the scratch is very red, Daniel,” Trujillo says patiently as Williams waved the back of his hand in his face. “But I see that your friend is starting to develop some bruises. Perhaps you may spare me to see to him, yes?”

Steve had been so caught up in watching Williams move that he jumps a little when Trujillo looks directly at him. He instinctively starts to shake his head—No, he’s fine, don’t worry about him—but that proves to be a spectacularly bad idea. The sloshy world around him  _ heaves,  _ and it takes everything in him not to stagger. It seems like between one second and the next,  Williams teleports from where he’s been pacing to Steve’s side. One strong arm catches Steve just under where he’s bruised as Steve starts to lean too far forward. Williams—a more familiar Williams, with a restrained accent and a firm stance—says, “I could have told you that was a bad idea,  McGarrett .”

If Steve weren’t still a little unsteady, he would shove Williams away in disgust. Yeah, he knows—Williams knows everything about Steve and what’s good for Steve,  _ whatever.  _ The tentative, warm feeling he‘d had when Williams had almost made him laugh bursts like a bubble in his chest. Steve scowls at the ground, disappointed and vaguely angry about it.

Mr. Trujillo is hovering behind Williams; as soon as Williams steadies Steve and steps away, the man steps in to guide Steve down to one of the beds against one wall. Steve answers a series of rapid-fire questions quickly as he can as Mr. Trujillo starts gently checking him over.

“If you can lift your arms comfortably, please remove your jacket and unbutton your shirt. Daniel, will you please--?”

Steve almost jerks away from Williams when he steps up dutifully. Ignoring how his shoulders have started aching, he strips mechanically, looking pointedly at the ground until he sees Williams shoes retreat. The brackets on their u-shaped rail screech softly as Williams pulls the curtain tucked to one side of the bed closed in his wake. It’s a kindness and a retreat, and Steve resents every second of it.

He doesn’t let himself think about how he had felt when Williams had called him  McGarrett again, like nothing had changed. Nothing  _ has  _ changed, Steve thinks angrily as Mr. Trujillo helps him lean back against the table. Danny Williams is still a powerful, popular, ass kissing jerk who likes to use every ounce of the fake authority he’s been given to sneakily make fun of Steve, and Steve still doesn’t know why he waited for Steve after they all met with the Dean; Steve doesn’t know why Williams forced a man who hated Steve to lie and protect him from the harsh discipline for fighting. Steve hit first; it doesn’t matter the reason why, that’s what his dad had taught him. That fight was Steve’s to take responsibility for, and instead Williams had taken all that guilt and distributed evenly to everyone who had thrown a punch—including himself, the boy who had essentially ended the fight. Steve just doesn’t know, and it feels a lot like walking into his first Chemistry class, mid-semester, and realizing that he was two full units behind. It had felt like his instructor had been speaking in a foreign language, and it had made Steve feel so small and stupid that he had sacrificed his reputation to focus on learning everything that he needed to learn as quickly as possible.

But Williams isn’t a titration equation; Steve can’t borrow a book or five from the library and learn about him. He doesn’t make any more sense the more time Steve studies him. And before today, that had been fine. Steve didn’t  _ want  _ Williams to make sense to him. Before Williams added all these new variables today, Williams was a fixed constant in Steve’s life. He didn’t change; he wasn't something that Steve could ever understand, and so Steve didn’t have to feel small and stupid and desperate to learn more when it came to Williams.

Now, all of that had been shot to hell. Now Steve doesn’t understand Williams any better than he had before, but he also feels like he needs to. He feels like this entire day Williams has been trying to tell him something, except Steve just can’t figure out what that is. It’s infuriating, and it  _ hurts.  _ Worse than the bite of the cold, worse than the ache settling into the heavy muscle under his ribs, it hurts that Williams is doing this to him. It feels like taunting; it feels like the type of bullying and manipulation that’s more Peterson’s style than Williams’. It really just, it just—

_ Sucks,  _ Steve thinks pitifully, mouth feeling suddenly very wobbly _. _

Mr. Trujillo tells him to breathe deeply, in and out, and Steve scrambles for his self control as he does. He’s almost certain that Williams is just on the other side of the curtain, and like hell is he going to give in to frustrated tears now, after everything and where Williams will be able to hear him.

He doesn’t know if Williams would mock him or pity him for it, but he knows that either would probably ruin Steve worse than any other taunting before.

\---

Steve expects Williams to still be around when Mr. Trujillo lets him back up and into his sweat-stiff shirt. He’s  _ absolutely not  _ disappointed when Mr. Trujillo pulls aside the curtain again and Williams is nowhere to be seen. The only sign that he was there at all is a note to Mr. Trujillo signed  _ Danny _ , informing Mr. Trujillo that he is now missing about a dozen  band-aids , and an unsigned, rough map labeled ‘Third Floor, follow path to get to familiar ground’ showing a little dotted path connecting an ‘X’ in a box-room labeled ‘infirmary’ and a check, on the other side of the floor at the end of several long, skinny rectangles connected long end to long end—a staircase, the master staircase most likely.

Mr. Trujillo makes another complicated noise and proceeds to give Steve a note excusing him from the next day’s P.E. class and strict instructions to use the balm Mr. Trujillo was prescribing. Steve nods and stumbles off, Danny’s map clutched in one hand and his jacket clutched in the other. By the time Steve makes his way back to his dorm floor, he’s already decided to excuse himself from the rest of the day; it’ll be his only tardy for the entire year he’s been at the academy. He hasn’t earned it, he thinks—his dad had always been a big believer in pushing his limits, and he had never approved of sick days. But Steve’s dad wasn’t here right now. He didn’t want to talk to Steve any more, and so Steve didn’t have to listen to him anymore, either.

Steve carefully lowers himself onto his back on his bed. Any lingering hesitation he might have had about taking the rest of the day, whatever his dad may have had to say about it, it all becomes a moot point; he’s dead asleep almost before his head settles on his pillow.

\---

Like before, it eventually blows over. Whatever excitement Steve had managed to stir up dies down, and people eventually forget that nerdy, quiet Steve  McGarrett was the same guy who almost beat in Rick Peterson’s face. The only lingering relief that Steve gets is that no one says anything about his choice in bracelets any more. Steve refuses to take the bracelet off, carefully tucking it up under his sleeve during uniform inspections. For the rest of the time it just hangs down around the heel of his hand, a bright streak of rainbow color against the dull  blue of the blazer sleeve.

Peterson remembers, Steve can see it in his face whenever Steve catches him glaring. If Williams remembers, he doesn’t let on. It’s back to regularly scheduled comments and reprimands about Steve’s pant legs (too short again,) his blazer (missing a button again,) the length of his hair (getting too long again.)  Steve  lets all the messy, terrible, confusing things he knows about Danny Williams fade, too. Williams becomes a known constant to him again, and Steve stubbornly tells himself that it’s a relief until it becomes one. Still,  Steve wears  Mary’s bracelet until he gets caught almost six months later when it slips down during inspection , and he has to cut it off. Williams must see it a hundred times, a thousand before that ; but for all that he practically has a ruler he carries around specifically to check the length of Steve’s hair and his hems, Williams never says a word about the bracelet around Steve’s wrist.

Steve doesn’t think about that much, and he stops thinking desperately about calling home; he re-ties Mary’s lanyard to his wrist, and then re-ties it again after the next time that he has to cut it off. He calls her less and less; he doesn’t get any more packages from her. The third time he gets caught with the lanyard on, he cuts it off, folds it up, and uses it to mark his place in the library’s battered copy of the  Odyssey he’s borrowed; the next time he thinks to look for it, it’s been months—he thinks the lanyard’s long gone.

**Author's Note:**

> here it is my friends, the single longest h50 fic i have ever written. as always, thank you for reading-- I hope you enjoyed.


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